How to Convert the Scanned PDF to Word Document

If you have a PDF to Word converter software or application then you can easily convert the scanned PDF files to MS Word document. This article will tell you about the free pdf to word converter online and also tell you about the different factor which affect on pdf to word conversion. If you have any question about this article please feel free to contact on our support team.

So what can you do if you have all of these scanned pdf files and need to edit them? The good news is that there are some ways for converting the scanned pdf file to word document. Converting scanned pdf to word online free large files are easy to convert back into a file format that usable in MS Word.

Are you looking for a way to convert PDF files to Microsoft Word or other editable formats? The program PDF to Word Converter basically allows you to convert your files in batch. You can easily online with the convert scanned pdf to editable pdf and convert pdf to editable word. Depending on the kind of document you are planning to edit, and whether you need the file to be in the most current version of whatever program you’re editing it in or not, you have a number of options. If a scanned PDF is all you have, though, converting it can still be an option for you.

How to type on a scanned PDF document?

Typing on a scanned PDF is possible with a desktop PDF solution such as Able2Extract Professional. Since a scanned PDF is basically an image of a document, typing on it will add a new layer containing text on top of the original image layer.

To type on a scanned PDF document with Able2Extract Professional:

  1. Open a scanned PDF in Able2Extract
  2. Go to the Edit Document tab
  3. Click on the Add Text button
  4. Place your mouse cursor anywhere on the document, left click, and start typing

Note: You can change properties of the added text in the right-side panel, such as the font, font size, color, outline, line spacing, etc.

How to edit a scanned PDF document in Word?

First, you will need to extract content from a PDF to the editable file format compatible with Microsoft Word by using a software application with OCR technology.

To convert a scanned PDF to DOCX with Able2Extract Professional:

  1. Open a scanned document you’d like to edit in Word
  2. While in the Convert tab, look for a Word section in the right-side panel that will let you choose the Format (DOCX – Word 2007, RTF – Rich Text Format, ODT – OpenOffice Writer) and Formatting (Standard, Frames, Text Only)
  3. Click on the Word button under the Convert tab in the main toolbar
  4. Set a file name, choose location, and hit Save

Once the extraction is completed, just open the resulting document in Word and start editing as usual. Beats manual retyping every time!

Can I convert a scanned PDF to Word for free?

Yes, you can. If you don’t want to pay for a scanned PDF to Word conversion, free online tools will do the job (such as the one on this page).

Keep in mind that:

  • Free tools are not as accurate as the paid ones in most cases
  • Free tools might have limitations when it comes to file size, number of conversions per day, etc.
  • Since the conversion is taking place on a server, you’ll need to upload your file and download the resulting editable document
  • Free tools can be overloaded at any given time, making the conversion much slower than with a dedicated desktop software application that has OCR

To conclude, free online tools can help you convert a scanned PDF to Word for free. However, if you are not comfortable with their limitations, you should look into a desktop PDF converter with OCR such as Able2Extract Professional.

How to make scanned PDF searchable without Adobe® Acrobat®?

There are two ways to make a scanned PDF searchable without Adobe® Acrobat®

  1. Convert a scanned PDF to a searchable file format using a free online tool with OCR
    You can use the free online scanned PDF to Word OCR converter to convert your scanned PDF into a Word document on this page. Then, open the converted document in Word, press CTRL + F, and search for a word or phrase.
  2. Turn a scanned PDF into searchable one using a desktop PDF software (Able2Extract Professional)
    The whole process is done in a few steps: simply open your PDF in Able2Extract and click on the Searchable PDF button on the main toolbar. Able2Extract Professional will automatically perform OCR on your scanned document making it searchable from inside the Able2Extract Pro interface (no output file). Use the search field in the footer toolbar to look for a word in a searchable PDF (you can also choose to make the search Whole Words Only and/or Case-sensitive).

OCR a Document or Image in Acrobat

Adobe Acrobat is the original standard program for creating, editing, and viewing PDF files. It’s commonly used in business, and is bundled with Adobe Creative Suite and the full version of Creative Cloud, so there’s a good chance your business computer already has it installed—or you can install it for free from your Creative Cloud subscription. If so, it’s a great tool to OCR your documents quickly on a Mac or PC.

Note: this tutorial requires Adobe Acrobat, not Adobe Reader. The latter is a free app just for viewing PDFs. If that’s all you have, jump to the end of this tutorial for some other great OCR tools you can use.

PDF in Acrobat ready to OCR
Open your image or PDF and get Acrobat started recognizing your text 

Acrobat can recognize text in any PDF or image file in dozens of languages. All you have to do is open the scanned document or image that you’d like to OCR, then click the blue Tools button in the top right of the toolbar. In that sidebar, select the Recognize Text tab, then click the In This File button.

You’ll now get some options to tweak your OCR. If you’re recognizing a document that’s in your computer’s default languages (English (US) in my case), simply click OK to get your text recognized. Otherwise, click the Edit… button to select your OCR language, pick your PDF output style, and the resolution you want Acrobat to use while recognizing your text.

Acrobat OCR settings
Tweak your OCR settings

After a brief pause indicated by a progress bar on the bottom of the window, your text will be fully recognized. It took only around 15 seconds to recognize text on a scanned 1 page form on my 2012 MacBook Air, but a couple minutes on a 30 page full-color textbook PDF. Once it’s done, you can select any text in the document and copy it as normal, or search for text in the document. By default, Acrobat will save the recognized text inside the original file when you OCR a PDF, and if you OCR an image it’ll save the image with its text in a new PDF file. Either way, the recognized text will show up in any PDF reader afterwards, just as if it was an original digital document.

OCRed text in Acrobat
Copy text from a scanned document as plain text or with formatting—or just use the PDF as a normal PDF

With the text recognized, you can now markup the PDF using all the normal markup tools—you can highlight, cross out text, and more. You can even copy the text with the detected formatting, though that’s often less accurate than the text recognition itself.

Export Your OCRed Documents

If you’re wanting to edit your original scanned documents, or perhaps reuse the info in them in a new document, you’ll want more than just selectable text on a PDF. You’ll want the full document converted. Acrobat makes that easy as well, OCRing the text and exporting it as a new document in one step.

Just open the document you want to OCR and convert, click File > Save As… and choose the format you’d like. You can export as a Word or rich text document, Excel or CSV spreadsheet, or as HTML. Add the file name you want and the location you’d like to save your new file, and click Save. Acrobat will proceed to show the same progress bar at the bottom of the window as it recognizes the text and formatting in your document, and then will save the exported copy.

Export PDF or image in Word format from Acrobat
Export your images and PDFs from Acrobat with varying results.

Acrobat exports from scanned documents are both surprisingly good and frustratingly bad. It’ll recognize most of the text and formatting, and you’ll likely be surprised by how nice the finished exported document looks if it’s not too complex. But then, it’s still not the original document. There will be mistakes, formatting you’ll need to fix, and more. The best way is always to use the original digital document, but this is a great way to get back a digital copy of a document if all you have is a scan.

While OCR isn’t perfect, Acrobat’s OCR is quite good. In this scanned form, almost every word was detected correctly, though one instance of the word Name was detected as N””e. That’s perfectly good enough if you’re just wanting to be able to roughly search through your documents using your PDF reader’s search tool, though if you’re actually using the OCR to make a copy of the original text, you’ll want to proof-read it first and make sure to correct any obvious mistakes.

OCR Multiple Documents At Once

Got a ton of documents you want to OCR at once? Acrobat’s great for that as well. Just open any document in Acrobat, then open the Recognize Text sidebar pane as before. This time, select In Multiple Files button, and you’ll see a window where you can drag all your files you want to OCR. Again, you can add PDF or image files, and Acrobat will recognize the text and save them in PDF format. There’s also a few extra options, where you can choose where to save the finished files and how you’d like them named.

Bulk OCR documents

Other OCR Tools

Acrobat isn’t the only way to OCR text from your scanned documents, of course. If you don’t already have a copy of it, there’s a ton of other tools you can use. We already covered the best tools for OCR on your Mac: Prizmo, FineReader, the Doxie app, PDFPen, and Evernote. Prizmo and PDFPen also would work on your iOS devices for OCR on the go, and the Doxie app also works on PCs. Evernote doesn’t let you copy text out, but it works everywhere—and on the PC, OneNote’s OCR is great and free.

There’s also the free Tesseract OCR library, with a terribly basic free Mac app that can recognize text for you. Another budget-friendly OCR tool is pica text, for $3.99. Either way, if OCR is all you need, you don’t have to get a copy of Acrobat just for that—but if you have Acrobat, its OCR tool is a great extra.

Check out how you can convert scanned PDF documents to editable Word files using our OCR.

Converting your file from PDF to Word is easy. The process simply returns the contents of your PDF file to its original format.

However, if you are scanning documents and saving them to PDF, most times, they’re stored as images. OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is required to extract the text and save the converted documents into editable Word files.

How to Convert Scanned PDF to Word Documents Online

  1. Go to the Smallpdf PDF to Word online tool.
  2. Upload your PDF file via drag-and-drop.
  3. Select the option you need—the OCR conversion is only available as a Pro feature.
  4. Wait for the conversion to finish.
  5. Download your editable Word file.

Conclusion

If you have some advantages of using a computer program to do such kind tidying up, then you should be apt in setting up such a program and conduct at least a few conversion processes. However, should you have a matter in your mind on how to convert scanned pdf to editable pdf, or about converting pdf to word, then you must here get the word.

Converting a scanned PDF to word document is a bit tricky, but also very simple if you know whose help you can get. You need to convert scanned PDF to editable word documents online free. You can opt for any service advertising on the internet but it may cost you a lot of money. There are some free tools available that work perfectly in converting your PDFs to editing tools such as Microsoft Word 2007 and Word 2010.

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